You throw the ball. You catch the ball. You hit the ball…Of course, baseball fans know that this line from Bull Durham is far from true, part of the humor of the movie and a huge part of the fun of the game. This blog is a space to talk about baseball, being a baseball fan, all of those things that make the game fun and the Angels, because they make baseball fun for me.

Beach Ball Brutality and Other Preventable Tragedies: Another Very Special Post from TIAVSG

It’s late June and I have now attended enough baseball games at the Big A and other stadiums to see that the desperate need for another Very Special Post at TIAVSG is becoming increasingly clear. This time our serious and important message concerns none other than your friend and mine, the beach ball.

Each year thousands of innocent beach balls are emotionally traumatized, physically crippled for life or worse in tragic baseball stadium incidents. The truly heartbreaking part of this terrible situation is that with only a little education, it’s so very preventable. Beach balls are fun loving, lively creatures that love nothing more than a shared good time with close human companions, but they also have a crippling fear of loud, noisy crowds, so finding the appropriate setting to enjoy quality time with your beach ball is key.

Forget the inconvenience to me as fan, what with this annoying beach ball blocking my view of the game, because this isn’t about me. It’s about this poor abused beach ball and the trauma it endures at the ball park. April 22, 2012, Angels vs. Orioles. Photo by This is a very simple game…

Beaches, swimming pools and public parks are all excellent places for beach balls to grow up happy and well adjusted with plenty of room to bounce around free. Major League Baseball stadiums, however, are nothing short of a house of horrors for our boingy friends. Beaten and bashed around, moving ever farther from their rightful owners, being spiked from great heights, and eventually landing on the field in front of an entire crowd of angry, accusing eyes and loudly booing mouths?? It’s more than a beach ball can take, let me tell you, and few if any ever recover from the trauma. Most require immediate deflation at the hands of kindly security guards and understanding baseball fans to put them out of their misery.

This poor beach ball never hurt anyone in its life and now it is destined for a compassionate deflation and all because its uninformed owners didn’t know enough to leave it at home. Please, help stop the madness!! June 12, 2012, Angels at Dodgers. Photo by This is a very simple game…

But fortunately, there is still hope for our lighthearted and light bodied friend, the beach ball. Yes, that’s right, together we can help stop the madness and allow beach balls everywhere to lead out happy fulfilling lives by simply leaving them at home when we go to the ballgame. Yes, that’s right. All you have to do is leave them at home. The beach ball euthanasia anguished security guards will thank you, your pro beach ball rights section mates will thank you and, most importantly, your beach balls will thank you!

And, while we’re on the subject of Very Special Post topics, I have another dire public safety issue to bring to your attention, namely that all too innocently-monikered baseball stadium menace, the wave. Please read the following important JumboTron public service announcement brought to us by the safety minded front office staff of the Texas Rangers.

Normally, I would never cite any Texas Rangers information on this Angels blog, but as you can see from the above, the wave is so detrimental to our well being as baseball fans, that it demands a triconta-partisan effort to eradicate this menace. I don’t know what more I can add to the Rangers already highly informative PSA other than my own passionate pleas: Please, I implore you, stop and think before you wave. If you can’t restrain yourself from rising in unison from your seats to wave your arms in everyone’s face, and from peer pressuring others into doing the same, for the sake of the baseball players you are supposed to be rooting for but have now effectively told you don’t give two flying figs about the outcome of the game; if you can’t do it for the sake of all of the money you and those around you spent on their tickets to enjoy the game; if you can’t do it for the health of your own joints and muscles then, please, do it for the children.

Little do these poor uninformed people know that they are risking their own health and that of everyone around them. Remember, friends don’t let friends do the wave!! June 2, 2012, Angels vs. Rangers. Photo by This is a very simple game…

Thank you very much for your time today. This has been another TIAVSG Very Special Post. I now return you to your regularly scheduled baseball blogs programming. Go Angels!

The beach isn’t exactly safe for the beach balls, either, though. I cringe at the thought of all those lonely beach balls floating around Lake Superior…the northern winds blowing them from here to Canada, to Duluth and back. I also see enough waves here in the lake, that I don’t need to see them in an arena or stadium!
–Mike

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